Sally Kinnes reports for Herald Scotland:
Peter Godwin shares his eye-witness accounts of atrocities in Zimbabwe.
Robert Mugabe's generals had a name for what they did after the elections of 2008. They called it Operation Mavhoterapapi – Who Did You Vote For? There was only one possible answer and those who gave the wrong one risked ending up like Denias Dombo. A mechanic with a young family, he was left so badly beaten he subsequently tried to hang himself.
Peter Godwin's new book, The Fear, chronicles this kind of torture and much, much worse. A white Zimbabwean, Godwin returned to his homeland in April 2008 to write a post-election feature for Vanity Fair. He had hoped to be dancing on Mugabe's political grave. Instead what followed was so dreadful, he knew it deserved a book. “The longer I stayed, the more I felt it needed to be recorded. When you see something like that happen, if you have the power to amplify it, then you have a duty to do so.”
Travelling with his younger sister, Georgina, Godwin describes in the book his journey around Zimbabwe as Mugabe worked on rigging the results. When they first see someone being pushed in a wheelbarrow, they think it is because of the transport shortage. It is only later that they realise these are the first victims of torture, being wheeled home because they are too badly injured to walk. Then the catalogue of horrors unfolds: a man who was beaten, stripped naked and had his legs run over, twice; men whose testicles were tied with wire and yanked around until they passed out from the pain; a man whose penis was tortured with a crochet hook.
The beatings are military operations. “It's very organised. It's not spontaneous violence, there is something horribly structured about it, just as it was when the white farmers were attacked. When you talk to enough people, you know what is going to happen next, it is absolutely down to a plan.” As the military ratcheted up their assault to Operation Ngatipedzenavo – Let Us Finish Them Off – so the hospitals invented a new medical acronym. This was PEV, post-election violence.
~ more... ~
No comments:
Post a Comment